Fixed it, and thanks all for the input. I'll let you know if the Times calls.
My first trip to Bonneville was in 2012. We ran well until we burned a hole in a piston. As a result we had to miss our race the following weekend. It took a while, and one more motor, and one more missed race, and retiring after 5 laps at the next race, to figure out what we had done wrong. Apparently 11.5:1 compression ratio on pump gas is OK when using a wheezy downdraft carburetor, but put side-drafts on it, and boom. We didn't realize at the time that it was an 11.5:1 head. The motor was built, on the cheap, using spare and donated parts. So that is the disaster we were hoping to avoid this time, and we did.
After the 2012 event I became editor of this newsletter, and in my first issue I did stories on all the Opels I could find that had run at Bonneville, including Bill Ward, Ken Lindebak, the Black Diamond Racing guys, the Berkeley that has an Opel GT-derived nose on it, plus of course our story. If interested, I can upload those. (I sent Ellen a printed copy of that issue.)